Here’re 4 exercises for sharpening your visual skills. They’ll make you more observant and improve your memory. The key is to do them regularly until you feel proficient and automatic at visualisation. Read the rest of this entry »

Poor literacy and numeracy is the number one reason why young people quit school. And the number one block to them being ready for employment after leaving school. This trend is easy to change as more people understand how our fabulously talented visual children and adults operate. How can you help stop poor literacy and numeracy with NLP? Read the rest of this entry »

If everything is connected in life, how are reading, writing, spelling difficulties connected? Read this frustrated parent’s query, and you may find answers to the difficulties of that special someone you know. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed Under () by NLP-Life-Coach on 20-01-2011

How do learning difficulties begin?

Everyone visualizes / imagines / sees pictures in their heads. When you were 6 weeks young, you started smiling at your mother. You matched a picture in your head with the picture of the person looking at you. You might also recognise her voice or smell, but if she put on a wig, you would cry! Blind people visualize too. Vision and visualization are different things!If your friend walked into the room now, would you recognize him/her? Now imagine the friend with pink hair. Did you change your picture? Now imagine that you are watching a car driving up to the red traffic light. See it stopping. Watch the movie in reverse. By the way, what colour was the car?

This is how you control the pictures that you imagine. You are born with this skill. But sometimes a person gets stressed, the brain gets confused, and loses this skill or starts applying it wrongly. And that’s how learning difficulties begin.

Every person who does not have learning difficulties sees pictures in his/her imagination

easily, sharply, clearly

far enough to be comfortable, yet near enough to be easy to see

as movies or as still pictures, whichever s/he needs at a given moment.

A person excellent at math imagines the mathematical progressions and draws results,

…hence seeing numbers is an essential skill for mathematics.

A salesperson visualizes the concept s/he is selling and then describes it.

To spell,read, and count well you need to see still words and numbers.

Fluent readers store pictures of whole words in their brains. You also need to be able to do it in order to spell easily. Most people develop the skill of storing whole words and groups of numbers in their brains naturally. But some people don’t. And the confusion leads to literacy and numeracy learning difficulties. The harder they try, the more confused they are, and the letters and numbers may start moving around the page.

If you find spelling and reading easy, try this:

Do you see words in your imagination?

Where in your visual field are they? High, low, on the right or left?

See the word cat. If this is easy, try balloon. Was this easy? Try sophisticated.

If you’re good at spelling and reading, this exercise will probably be easy. You see the letters and spell the words. This is how it should be. It works in any language at any age. But if you cannot visualise words like this, you will probably find spelling and reading difficult. If you have dyslexia, the letters may be moving, having a party! Just imagine stopping them – like the car that you imagined stopping for a red traffic light.

If you have difficulties with learning literacy,

the skill of visualising words is very easy to learn. It is highly likely that no teacher taught you this at school. Even today teachers at schools and educational institutions still do not understand how people’s brains work. This is because anyone can apply for a teaching job, but not everyone will study the works of the brain before or after they get the job! But nowadays anyone can learn how our brains work at any age in any language in minutes. People who struggle with literacy learning difficulties are immensely visual, but are often stuck in the mode of moving pictures.

Similarly, imagine the number 21. Check that you see the number still, just like you did the cat, balloon, or sophisticated.

If you find visualising numbers easy,

add the numbers 21 and 24. Do you see them in your head as if they were in a photograph? What’s the result of the two added numbers?

how would you organize a phone number into 3 or 4 chunks of 2 or 3 digits to remember it?

to remember a PIN, see the group of its numbers as if it was in a photograph. Or see the order in which you press the PIN’s keys on a keypad

to remember start times of meetings visualize the digital time, e.g. 12:30 on the face of a digital or analog clock

If you find visualising numbers difficult,

try visualizing the number 2. If that’s difficult, see 2 eggs. Then see the word eggs.

if you like text messaging, imagine nice 2 c u or c u l8r. When you can see that, you can visualize numbers.

if you have used an abacus, play with visualizing the beads when you want to add up.

Why do the numbers that we use in the Western world have the shapes they have? Because they are derived from the Phoenician numerals which denoted the number of angles corresponding to the written number. Hence the shape of the number 1 had one angle. The shape of the number 2 had two angles, and similarly the shape of the number 9 had 9 angles.

NLP coaching for learning difficulties will certainly benefit you if you:

are a parent who can’t get help for a child with learning difficulties from the school, educational psychologist, local educational authority, etc.

family member, friend, or acquaintance of someone with learning difficulties

teacher, mentor, tutor, educational support worker, educator who wants to more efficiently work with students with learning difficulties

professional or entrepreneur in any field who is too busy or maybe embarrassed to get help for learning difficulties

highly or averagely intelligent

(probably) have several learning difficulties

do not have severe intellectual, emotional, behavioural, nor thinking disorders

processing sound – speech rambling, difficulty explaining in own words, using internal voice to work out consequences, speaking in incomplete sentences, difficulty following long sentences, flat / monotonous speech without rhythm and intonation, mispronouncing words, avoiding using words because of uncertainty how to pronounce them, difficulty learning foreign languages, difficulty with thinking and speaking at the same time, slurring speech / lack of articulation

physical / feeling / bodily

physical [bodily] perception – awkward / clumsy movements, poor muscle tone resulting in slow / awkward movements, bumping into objects due to not knowing where the body is in space in relation to objects, uneven handwriting with variable pressure, difficulty navigating in the dark, messy / disorganized workspace, difficulty with time signature in music

difficulty with logical reasoning, also understanding cause and effect

difficulty with thinking / planning / problem solving verbally and nonverbally, seeing the main point / core of things, difficulty with associative memory.

My 4 and a half year-old daughter refuses to color, write, read, and play independently. She heads straight for the TV, computer, or anything electronic she can get her hands on. She’s very bright. I’ve had to take all the computer games away, sell her iTouch, and disconnect the TV. I also have a 14 year-old son with ADHD. When he gets home from school, they play off each other. That’s when the yelling starts. My daughter doesn’t listen, doesn’t want to follow directions, I have to lock her in her room with a timer set for 5 minutes for her to get dressed.

My husband is in complete denial. I am bipolar, ADHD, depressed, and medicated. My son is on lamictal and it wears off too early. My daughter is the problem. What do I do? Who do I see? What kind of Dr. do I bring her to? School says she recognizes her words, but only when copying them, not trying on her own. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever thought of looking for a connection between learning difficulties and the eye movements of people who have them? My NLP work with learning difficulties has proven that there is a connection. Let’s explore it. Read the rest of this entry »

The problem:

“When writing, I can’t seem to say what I’d like to… And when I go to my math class, when the teaching assistant is there, she explains all to me. But when she isn’t there, I don’t understand the teacher. Then I just start drawing and get told off. I learn well through colors, so what I tried to do is instead of writing with black ink I used coloring pens. It really works. But I get really stressed in my class when the girls [my classmates] shout and argue.”

The solution:

When writing you can’t seem to say what you’d like to because you currently don’t visualise the content of what you want to say. Unless you see a clear picture of the story you want to write, words will be volatile and quickly escape your memory. Visualize the content of what you want to say. Then write it. Once you have the picture in your head, you’ll see all its details and be able to write about them well and without getting distracted. Use your work with colors. Add color to all the places, objects, and people in your imagination that you want to write about. Your brain will get it very quickly.

Exactly the same principle applies to math:

when the teaching assistant or teacher is explaining, visualise as much of what she’s saying as you can. Is she talking about numbers? Do you know what a number 2 looks like written down? If yes, then you can visualise numbers. Is she talking about symbols like + – x : = < > or fractions? If no, listen to her and write as much as you can. Writing math on paper is a prerequisite for visualizing it.

Use your colors while writing on paper and mentally visualizing. They’ll help you. At present you’re easily distractible, because you know you’re not getting it and so you resign every time you start drawing and go off the course of the lesson. Learn to visualise what the teacher is explaining. Then you’ll start understanding math better and faster. Once you reach this stage, you will be more focused and the girls arguing in class won’t sway your attention.

Learn to keep both feet firmly on the ground while you’re sitting in class, listening, and visualising the content of what your teachers are explaining. Grounding is an essential skill. You can learn it very quickly and master it with patience and practice!

How can you help STOP DYSLEXIA NOW?

Filed Under () by NLP-Life-Coach on 03-02-2011

NLP coaching for individuals and families with learning difficulties

Coaching cuts to the heart of the issue(s). And certainly shows why sometimes whole families have learning difficulties! You can get coaching in person in Toronto Canada and London UK, and by phone or Skype worldwide.

NLP coaching for learning difficulties in your community

Families can learn to use their visual skills for spelling, reading, writing, and numbers.

People of all ages who speak any languages can learn useful ideas.

Anyone can learn to help someone with learning difficulties,

hence you can learn to help visual thinkers to learn visually.

People can learn in their community / club / group

… anywhere in Canada, the UK, and the world.

Coaching by phone is ideal for introducing NLP coaching for learning difficulties to people in the comfort of where they are. And it certainly saves time, traveling, and energy.

wider school / college / university / educational institution initiative

students enjoy learning in afterschool clubs even more

variety of activities – mental imagery contributes to all aspects of education

parents learn and consequently their children learn

less administration

hence faster marking

fewer disciplinary measures

more students pass exams, therefore fewer students retake exams

NLP coaching for learning difficulties in the workplace

How can you and I help members of the working world to change their experience with words and numbers?

How can you and I help the business community?

Many adults believe that old dogs can’t learn new tricks. They concluded this due to old social conditioning, or due to what older generations believed about learning difficulties, or maybe due to the belief that they were born with or inherited literacy challenges. Many adults likewise think that there’s nothing they can do about their learning difficulties. And they will therefore probably tell this to their offspring. People can be very resistant to change because their beliefs function in systems, not in single thoughts.

Finally, NLP coaching for learning difficulties is available here for:

businesses of any size

entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial associations

professional networks and associations

organizations and corporations

support groups

rotary clubs

charities

public community centres and services

government departments

and also institutions working with offenders

Let’s talk about how I can most notably help your community with learning difficulties with NLP.

Filed Under () by NLP-Life-Coach on 21-02-2010

This coach employs adirect, clear, focused, systematic, intuitive, pragmatic, results oriented coaching style. Her coaching style combines authority and understanding, hence can be directive or reflective. Furthermore this coach coaches 247 365(6) across the timezones by phone and online worldwide, and in person in Toronto Canada and London UK.

People of all ages who speak any languages can benefit from NLP coaching for learning difficulties.This coach uses the tools of NLP, energetic NLP, grounding, and mental imagery. She works with people with dyslexic, dyscalculic, dyspraxic, ADD, ADHD, Asperger’s, memory underperforming, and other tendencies. Her coaching teaches them to use their visual skills to clearly and stably see words and numbers. And that is essential for eradicating learning difficulties.

Enriched by years of career in the performing arts this NLP coach also passes knowledge of music to people of 4 and more years of age in Toronto Canada and London UK. Implementing coaching and NLP into her teaching is another of her passions. NLP for the Music World is the first and unique promoter of the connection between NLP and teaching and learning music.

Emails: due to malware I will not open emails with blank subject lines nor attachments, especially in case of first-time enquiries. Of course, I will open emails with attachments when we arrange to send attachments.

For coaching in person I’m based in the city of Toronto Canada and London UK. I’m certainly happy to welcome you at my base in Toronto Canada or London UK. Or I’m equally happy to coach you in a place of your choice within the area of Toronto / London. I will not expect you to pay my travel expenses. And of course, we also have the option of coaching online.

When can you get coaching sessions? I coach 24 / 7 365(6) across the timezones. That benefits people with irregular working hours, busy traveling schedules, and situated within time zones other than GMT / EST.